Thursday's announcement about a halving of tariffs on goods shipped from China only applies to the summer's back-and-forth between the two nations, and not the "reciprocal" tariffs applied in April that Apple has already warned about.

Apple won an exemption on future semiconductor tariffs — at least temporarily — after investing $100 billion in the US. But it is still subject to Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs, and the new truce negotiated with China does not affect that.

According to the New York Times, Trump has agreed with China's Xi Jinping, to halve his fentanyl-related tariffs, which were announced over summer 2025. In its turn, China has agreed to suspend for a year its limits on exporting rare earth materials.

Those materials and China's initial decision to increase export controls would potentially affect Apple. But the suspension was already reported to have been lifted in June 2025.

At that point, AppleInsider reported that overall, the trade war continued to be bad for US businesses and consumers.

Semiconductor tariffs are still on the cards

Trump says that he and Xi Jinping did discuss semiconductor tariffs. These have been threatened for many months, with Trump repeatedly saying that they would be introduced very shortly.

There is no further detail on when they will be imposed. As far as China goes, Trump said that he did not rule out allowing Nvidia to sell its AI processors to China.

He said that the US should referee any deal between China and the US processor firm. China's official statement following the negotiations does not mention any agreement over semiconductors.

What this means for Apple

The fentanyl-related extra tariffs being withdrawn will not affect Apple. But these new negotiations were specifically conducted to beat a Trump-imposed pause on tariffs until November 10.

While that pause was in effect, Apple and other firms benefited from lower import tariffs. Specifically, if the pause had not been enacted, Apple would have had to pay 50 times more in tariffs than it had in March 2025.

That would have affected the iPhone 17 launch, and Apple was hit by tariffs over that period. But those amounted to only ten times more than Apple was paying before Trump launched his "reciprocal" tariffs.

Previously, Tim Cook estimated that tariffs would cost Apple up to $2 billion by the end of the September quarter. Cook is due to announce the final earnings report for that quarter later on October 30, 2025.